Nitrogen-containing heterocycles are prevalent in numerous biologically active products that are the bases and templates for countless pharmaceuticals and other compounds used in many disciplines, including medicinal chemistry. A small sampling of some these compounds include aspidospermidine, fawcettimine, vinblastine, manzamine A, ethosuximide, aminoglutethimide and doxapram, depicted below.

Typically only one enantiomer of a compound exhibits biological activity, while the other enantiomer generally exhibits no activity, or substantially reduced activity. In addition, different stereoisomers of a compound often exhibit differences in biological activity. As such, a stereoselective and enantioselective synthesis of the target compound could theoretically produce pharmaceuticals or compounds with greater biological activity, and therefore, greater medicinal value. However, stereoselective and enantioselective syntheses of these types of compounds have proven very difficult. Indeed, most syntheses reported to date yield racemic mixtures of the various compounds. While some stereoselective methods for the synthesis of certain nitrogen containing heterocycles and their cyclic amine derivatives are known, only a sparse number of enantioselective methods exist. Additionally, most of these stereoselective methods use chiral auxiliary chemistry specific to the oxindole lactam nucleus or cyclic imides, both of which require enolate stabilization, thereby limiting the scope of each transformation.